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At this sudden change from the plural to the singular, and at something personal and impertinent that she recognised in the tone and look of the speaker, a deep blush flooded Rachel's face, and she rose from her seat with dignity, but trembling in all her limbs.

"Aw – who the dickens is that fellow?" Mr. Buxton whispered, with a scowl – supposing, however, that he could only be a disappointed aspirant for Rachel's hand. "He's an impudent brute, whoever he is, and I have a good mind to tell him so. What's his name, eh?"

"I don't know," said Rachel. But as she spoke, and was about to move away, the stranger rose and stood with an air of courteous deference to let her pass him – an air that somehow indicated the breeding and manners of a gentleman; and all at once it flashed across her where and when she had seen him before. He was the man who had called at Toorak and been closeted with her aunt at the time when Roden Dalrymple had promised to come for her, nearly two years ago. She had gone out into the garden, thinking he might possibly have been Roden, to intercept him as he was going away. She had had only a distant glimpse of him – of his short, square figure, and the lower part of his face – but she recognised now that this was the same man. She had not gone many steps into the room, feeling strangely overwhelmed by her discovery, when a pair of exhausted waltzers went trailing by, and one of them said to the other, "Didn't somebody say Jim Gordon was here to-night? Where is the old fellow hiding himself? I should like to see him again."

The little man with the eyeglass was – of course he was – Roden Dalrymple's friend and partner.

She drew her hand from her cousin's arm, turned round, and walked deliberately back to the seat she had just quitted.

"No," she said to her pursuing cavalier, "do not come. Go and dance with somebody, and fetch me presently."

"My dear Rachel, you must allow me – aw, I couldn't really – "

"I want to speak to Mr. Gordon," she said, pausing in front of that gentleman. "Mr. Gordon, I want to ask you something. Will you kindly take me out to the lobbies – somewhere where it is quiet – if this lady will excuse you for a few minutes?"

Mr. Buxton was utterly bewildered, as well he might be. He stared, stiffened himself, and then went off to find Laura, and to tell her of the extraordinary proceedings of her cousin "with some insolent beggar whose name she said she didn't know, though she addressed him by it almost in the same breath," and to intimate (merely by way of soothing his own injured dignity) that there seemed to him something "rather fishy" going on.

And Mr. Gordon, after losing his presence of mind for about half a minute, and then only partially recovering it, silently offered his arm to the lady who had made that strange appeal to him. He had never seen her until to-night; he had hoped he never should see her, or have anything to do with her. She had been, in his imagination of her, the embodiment of all that was detestable in woman. But now something in the candid young face, unnaturally set and pale, and in the suppressed passion and purpose of her manner, gave him compunctious misgivings, and a vague but alarming impression that there had been some blundering somewhere.

"You are Mr. Gordon, are you not?" she began hurriedly, as soon as they were out of the crowd and glare of the ball-room. "Yes, I thought so; but I did not recognise you at first. I should have waited for an introduction, but I was afraid you might go away. I think you know who I am. What you were saying just now – had it not some reference to me?"

The little man began to stammer incoherently. He was completely overbalanced by the shock of this unexpected attack. Rachel, on the contrary, usually so fluttered by an emergency, had a sort of fierce, collected calm about her.

"I am sure it had," she said. "And I want to know what you meant?"

"I – a – perhaps you are aware that I am Mr. Dalrymple's friend, Mrs. Kingston. I am therefore, perhaps, something of a partisan – forgive me, if I forgot myself for the moment – "

"Ah," she broke out sharply, "there has been some great mistake! Tell me – quickly – before anyone is here to interrupt us – did you come to see my aunt that Christmas – the Christmas before last?"

"Certainly I came to see her and you," he replied.

"Did he send you?"

"Of course he did."

"Why?"

"Why!" he echoed angrily. "Do you mean to say you don't know why?"

"I know nothing," said Rachel. She stood before him shining in her satin and diamonds, without a trace of colour in her face; and the anguish of her beseeching eyes told him plainly that she spoke the truth.

"Oh, dear me, this is terrible!" he exclaimed, in a flurry of dismay and consternation. "Do you mean to say that you didn't know that he was ill? – that you didn't tell Mrs. Hardy to write that letter? – that it was all done without your knowing anything about it? Good Heavens! would anybody believe there were such malignant fiends in existence – and such fools!" he added bitterly.

Then he told her the whole story – how her lover had got hurt, and had lain insensible for many days, between life and death – how his first anxiety upon recovering consciousness was about his appointment with her – how he had deputed his friend to go to Melbourne and explain his inability to keep it; and how he (Mr. Gordon) had seen Mrs. Hardy and afterwards Mr. Kingston, and been led by them to an apparently unavoidable conclusion.

"She said you were not willing to see me, but that she would give you my messages and explanations," said the little man, thinking it would be best for his friend (and not much caring what it would be for other people) to have it all out at once, while he was as about it; "and that she would send me a note to the club, where I was staying, in the evening, or instruct you to do so. She had already told me that you were re-engaged to – a – your present husband. At night I got the letter, in which she repeated this assertion, stating that you had empowered her to do so."

"And you went and told him that?"

"I did not go and tell him that – for I did not want to kill him – until I had taken every possible precaution to get it corroborated."

"Yes?" ejaculated Rachel, breathlessly.

"I obtained an introduction to Mr. Kingston at the club, and I asked him on his honour to tell me if what Mrs. Hardy had said was true."

"You told him why you wanted to know?"

"I did."

She stood still for a few seconds to collect her strength; whole years of effort and agony were concentrated in that little interval.

"Shall you be going back to Queensland soon?" she asked quietly.

"I am going back to-morrow," he said – though he had not previously thought of doing so.

"Tell him when you see him – tell him from me – that I never knew anything– never, never, from the day I saw him last until to-night."

"It will break his heart to hear it, Mrs. Kingston."

"No – he will be glad to know that I was not utterly base. And I – I want him to know it."

"And shall I —can I – tell him that you were really not engaged when they said you were – when he thought you were waiting for him?"

She flushed deeply and drew herself up with a little stately gesture.

"He will not wish you to go into those particulars, Mr. Gordon. If you will give him my message simply, that is all I want you to do. He will understand it. Will you take me back to the ball-room now? I should like to find my cousin, Mrs. Reade."

CHAPTER V.
A CRISIS

AS nature makes us, so to a great extent, the most of us remain, when education has done its very best, or its very worst, to modify the great mother's handiwork. Her patterns, of which no one ever saw the original designs, and that have been unknown centuries a-weaving, cannot be sensibly altered in the infinitesimal fragment that one human lifetime represents, though every thread of circumstance, in its right or wrong adjustment, must have its value in the ultimate product, whatever that unimaginable thing may be.

Still, in the individual man or woman, here and there, the type that he or she belongs to is temporarily obscured by accidental causes; the lines of character, laid down by many forefathers, are twisted or straightened by violent wrenchings of irresponsible fate – as in less important branches of nature's business her processes are interrupted by lightning and earthquakes, and other rebellious forces.

Rachel, from the hour when she discovered how it was that she and Roden Dalrymple had been defrauded of their "rights," was apparently quite changed (though – as she is still a very young woman – we are not prepared to suppose that she will never be her old weak and timid and clinging self again). She was turned, from a soft and shrinking girl, into a hard and fearless, if not a defiant, woman.

The immense strength of her love – always an incalculable "unknown quantity" in the elements of human character and the factors of human destiny – had already given force and point, and meaning and dignity, to her whole personality and her relations with life; but now the magnitude of her wrongs and misfortunes, and still more of his, seemed to dwarf and crush every feeble trait and sentiment in her.

She went back to the ball-room, very white and silent, on Mr. Gordon's arm; and the first person of her own party whom she met there was Mr. Reade, under whose protection she placed herself, dismissing her late escort with a quiet "good-night."

She asked to be taken to Beatrice; and Ned, who never knew from whom he had received her, piloted her through the crowd until he found his small wife, whose bright eyes no sooner rested on Rachel's face than they recognised a new calamity.

"Has she heard anything, I wonder?" she asked herself in dismay. "Are you ill?" she inquired aloud.

"I want to go home," said Rachel.

The little woman did not waste time asking useless questions. She took her cousin to the cloak-room, sent Ned for a cab, and in a few minutes the three were driving to the Kingstons' hotel.

When they reached Rachel's drawing-room, and Ned had been sent downstairs to see if her maid was on the premises, Mrs. Reade put her arms round her tenderly, and begged to know what was the matter with her.

But Rachel, singularly unresponsive to the rare caress, would not tell – would not talk at all. She would not betray the mother's crime to the daughter, and she would not mention the name of her beloved, even to her dearest friend, in these married days.

"I am not well," she said, gently but with an odd harshness in her face and voice. "I could not dance – I could not stay in that place. I shall be better here. Go back, Beatrice, and make excuses for me. Say I was not well."

"I shall do no such thing," said Beatrice bluntly. "I shall not leave you until Graham comes home."

Rachel begged and protested with a sharp peremptoriness that was very unusual to her. Beatrice, full of anxiety and consternation, was obdurate.

In the midst of their discussion, they heard Mr. Kingston coming upstairs, bustling along in great haste. He flung open the door, with an air of angry irritation.

"Oh, here you are!" he exclaimed loudly. "What on earth are you doing? Everybody is inquiring for you, Rachel. Aren't you well? Why didn't you tell me, and let me bring you home, if you wanted to come? You have set all the room talking and gossiping, slinking off before midnight in this way – as if you were a mere nobody, who would not be missed – and not letting me know. What's the matter, eh?"

Rachel, without changing her position by a hair's breadth, lifted her eyes steadily and looked at him, but she did not speak.

Mrs. Reade saw the look, and she needed no words to tell her that some crisis in the conjugal relations of this pair had come, which no outsider had any business to see or meddle with; and she guessed correctly what it was.

"I will go back, and make what explanations are necessary," said she; "and I will come round in the morning, Rachel."

And she went out quickly, and closed the door behind her. On the stairs she met Rachel's maid going up, and told her her mistress would ring when she wanted her; and in the lobby of the hotel she replied to her husband's anxious inquiries by declaring irrelevantly that she wished Mr. Kingston, and his house and his money, were all at the bottom of the sea.

That gentleman, meanwhile, after following her out upon the landing, and looking over the stairs to see that her natural protector was in attendance, returned to his wife with a vague presentiment of unpleasantness in some shape or other.

He, too, had been struck with the peculiar expression of Rachel's face, and a guilty conscience intimated at once that she had "found out something," though it did not suggest any catastrophe in particular. There were so many things that, by unlucky accident, she might find out.

"However, I am not going to be called to account by her," he said to himself, in that spirit of swagger which she had herself nursed and nourished by her excess of wifely meekness. "I am not Ned Reade, to submit to be dictated to and sat upon by my own wife – so she needn't begin it."

And he walked into the drawing-room in a lordly manner.

The reception that he met with staggered him considerably.

"Graham," said Rachel, in a very quiet voice, "did you send word to Mr. Roden Dalrymple that I was engaged to you that Christmas – you know when I mean – two years ago, when I was ill? Did you tell that lie to Mr. Gordon deliberately, when you knew how things were with us?"

He was silent – intensely silent – for a few minutes, amazed, ashamed, embarrassed, and savage. He did not know how to answer her. Then he gave a little short surly laugh.

"What about it? Who has been talking to you of those things? What is Mr. Dalrymple to you now, I should like to know?"

"Did you?" she persisted.

"And what if I did?" he retorted roughly, but still making a ghastly attempt at badinage. "All's fair in love and war, you know, my dear; and it was that aunt of yours who told the lie, as you elegantly term it – if it was a lie – not I; I merely did not contradict her."

She looked at him steadily, with that implacable hardness in her once soft eyes.

"I will never forgive you," she said; "I will never, never forgive you."

"I am sure I am very sorry to hear it; but I suppose I can manage to get on without your forgiveness," he began. And then he gave up trying to make a joke of it, and turned upon her savagely. "Have you been seeing that fellow, Rachel? Tell me this instant; I insist upon knowing."

"I have seen his friend," she said, quietly.

"And did he send his friend to make those explanations to you – to you?"

"No; he did not send him. It was by accident that I met Mr. Gordon to-night!"

"And what business had you to talk to Mr. Gordon – to talk to anybody – about your old love affairs? Do you forget that you are a married woman – that you are my wife? It was bad enough when you were single to be mixing yourself up with a disreputable scoundrel like that – "

"He is not a disreputable scoundrel," she interposed sternly. "He is the most upright gentleman – he is the most noble man – in the wide world. I might have known," she added, drawing herself up proudly, "that he would never have forsaken me! I might have been sure that he would never break his word; that whoever was to blame for what happened to me that time, he was not! But I let myself be twisted round anybody's fingers rather than trust in him. It serves me right, it serves me right! I was not worthy of him."

"Well – upon my word!"

"You need not look at me so, Graham. I have never deceived you. I told you before I married you exactly how it was with me. I have never had any secrets from you, and I never will have any. You know as well as I do that I loved him – ah! I did not love him enough, that is what has ruined us! – and so I shall while I live, if I live to be a hundred."

"You mean to say you can sit there and tell me that to my face?"

"I can only tell the truth," she replied, with the same hard deliberation. "I could no more help loving him, especially now I understand how things have been with us – no one will know it, but it will be in my heart – than I could help breathing. When I leave off breathing, then I shall forget him perhaps, not before."

Mr. Kingston was beside himself with passion – as, indeed, so was she.

"Forewarned is forearmed," he said, with a sort of sardonic snarl; "I shall know now what steps to take to protect my honour."

"You know perfectly well that your honour – what you call your honour – is safe," she replied proudly. "If I am not to be trusted, he is. Do not insult us any more. We have had enough cruelty; we shall have quite enough to bear – he and I."

And so they went on with these bitter and defiant recriminations – Mr. Kingston, of course, insisting upon giving due prominence to his own wrongs, which were very real ones in their way, and both of them making reckless proposals with respect to their domestic arrangements – until suddenly, without any apparent warning, Rachel went off into wild hysterics, and the doctor had to be sent for.

Perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened under all the circumstances. She was very ill for several hours; and in the morning, when passion was spent, and she was lying in her bed still and quiet, with her head swathed in wet bandages, her husband knelt down beside her and asked her to forgive him.

"It was for love of you that I did it," he said; "and I am punished, too. We can't undo it now, Rachel, if we would, and there's no good in making a public talk and scandal. Let bygones be bygones, won't you, dear?"

She lifted her heavy eyes to his face. They were cold and hard no longer, but unutterably dull and sad.

"Yes," she said wearily; "we have both been wrong; we have injured one another. We must try to make the best of it; it is the only thing we can do now."

He kissed her and stroked her face, and adjusted the wet bandages.

"There, there," he said soothingly, "we both forgot ourselves a little. We said a great deal more than we meant, I daresay. People do when they are out of temper."

And he bade her go to sleep, told her he would take her for a drive in the afternoon if she felt well enough, and went forth with the sense that he was treating her magnanimously to receive and reply to inquiries after her health in person.

By noon, "all Melbourne," according to Mrs. Hardy's calculation, was aware that Mr. and Mrs. Kingston had had a quarrel (though there was every variety of conjecture as to the cause of it, and a division of opinion as to which was the most to blame); but it was not Mr. Kingston's fault if all Melbourne was not satisfied by nightfall that the quarrel had been made up.

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. READE MEETS HER MATCH

"WILL Mr. Roden Dalrymple do Mrs. Edward Reade the great favour to call upon her to-morrow (Thursday) morning, if convenient to him, between ten and twelve o'clock? She is particularly anxious to see him upon a matter of private business."

This note was despatched from South Yarra to Menzies on a certain night in the early part of December, a few weeks after the Town Hall ball. Mr. Dalrymple had just come to Melbourne, and Mrs. Reade, through the gossip of afternoon visitors, had heard of it.

She had heard of a great deal more besides – from Laura's husband chiefly; and the critical nature of the situation, and her anxious solicitude for Rachel's welfare in the midst of the perils and temptations to which, while a meeting with her old lover was possible, she would be exposed, made it seem absolutely necessary that the person who was most capable of doing so effectually should interfere once more.

The course she adopted in undertaking this delicate and difficult enterprise was worthy alike of her courage and her good sense. She had never met Mr. Dalrymple, and she had no definite knowledge of his character, only an impression that he was "wild" – a man of the world, with a touch of the libertine and the vagabond about him – and that he was also undoubtedly a gentleman, with some of the finer qualities that are the heritage of good blood.

Yet she determined that she would abjure all schemes and artifices, and see him herself before there was time for anything to happen, and appeal to his honour and generosity on behalf of the woman he loved – upon whose peace it seemed evident to her he had some selfish if not distinctly evil designs.

"He has come to town in consequence of Mr. Gordon's representations, of course, for no other purpose than to see her," the little woman said to herself the moment she heard of his arrival; "and if he does see her, nothing but trouble can possibly come of it."

So she determined to prevent trouble if possible, and this seemed to her the proper way.

She prepared herself for the interview on the Thursday morning, without any sense of having undertaken a difficult task.

When he arrived she was discussing dinner with her cook, and she walked from the larder to the drawing-room with a very grave and thoughtful face, but feeling perfectly serene and self-possessed.

He was standing in the middle of the room, facing the door, with his hat in his hand when she entered. He looked immensely tall, and stiff, and stately. There was an air of impracticable independence in his attitude, and in the distant dignity of his salutation that disconcerted her a little. He was wonderfully like his photograph she thought, and yet he was a much more imposing personage than she had bargained for.

"Oh, Mr. Dalrymple – it was so kind of you to come," she said, in her quick, easy way. "I must apologise for summoning you in such a very informal manner, but – a – won't you sit down?"

She dropped into one of her soft, low chairs; and her visitor seated himself at a little distance from her, not hesitatingly, but with just so much deliberation as indicated a protest against the prolongation of the interview.

"I understood from your note that you wished to see me upon some business," he suggested gravely.

"I did," she replied, feeling unaccountably flustered. "Perhaps you will think it rather impertinent of me – perhaps it is a liberty for me to take – but the fact is I have so deep an interest in my cousin's welfare – she is so very dear to me – I must plead that as my excuse – "

"You are speaking of Mrs. Kingston?" he interposed in the same cool and distant manner, "I hope she is quite well? I have not had the pleasure of seeing her since her marriage."

"She is quite well, thank you. I trust she will keep so, but I am afraid she is not very strong. Mr. Dalrymple, I ought perhaps to tell you that I – that Rachel told me – that I am aware of the relationship that has existed between you."

"We will not speak of that, if you please, Mrs. Reade."

"But I sent for you on purpose to speak of it."

"Then I must ask you to excuse me," he said, rising haughtily. "I cannot discuss those matters with strangers – still less with a member of Miss Fetherstonhaugh's family."

"But, Mr. Dalrymple, I am not to blame for anything that has happened – for any mistakes that have been made – I assure you I am not. I never knew of your accident – I never knew that Mr. Gordon came down – I never knew anything more than Rachel did, until it was too late. And I was her intimate friend all that time, and she made me her confidante. I served her interests as far as a friend who loved her could, to the best of my power."

"If that is so, I am very grateful to you," he said gently, "though I am afraid you failed to see what her interests were. May I ask if you are acting under her instructions now? Did she authorise you to make this appointment for the purpose of speaking of these things?"

"Of course she did not."

"Then we will not speak of them. There would be very grave impropriety in doing so. You must see, Mrs. Reade, that nothing you can say will in the least degree affect the case for anyone. I think we all know the truth of the story now. It is too late to take any action one way or the other. For Mrs. Kingston's sake, the fewer reminiscences we allow the better. Our business is to reconcile ourselves to circumstances, since they are irrevocable, and to let the past alone. If it was your intention to explain to me that you were guiltless of active participation in the crime which parted us, believe me, I appreciate the kind motive, and I thank you from my heart. But it is much better not to say any more about it."

He was still standing with his hat in his hand, and that peculiar distant look in his sad and haughty face. Mrs. Reade sat before him in her low chair silent, with her eyes cast down.

Not one of the numerous gentlemen in whose affairs she had condescended to take an interest had ever treated her like this, and she felt inexpressibly humiliated. Yet she had no sense of resentment, strange to say, against the individual who dominated her, and the position generally, in such an unexampled manner.

"Did I understand you to say that Mrs. Kingston was not strong?" he inquired after a short pause.

"I think she is very well," Mrs. Reade meekly responded. "Her constitution is quite sound; but her nervous system is delicate. She cannot stand worry, or shocks, or any great excitement or fatigue – any of those things upset her."

"I should imagine so. But it is always possible to keep her free of those things, is it not?"

Mrs. Reade replied, not so much to the letter as to the spirit of the question.

"Her husband takes good care of her," she said. "He is very thoughtful for her comfort. She does not run any risk of harm that he can spare her. If we are all as careful of her welfare as he is, Mr. Dalrymple – if we are as scrupulous to protect her peace now she is at peace – "

She broke off, and lifted her eyes wistfully.

Mr. Dalrymple looked down upon her with stately and impenetrable composure.

"I am deeply thankful to know that her marriage has so far been satisfactory," he said. "I suppose the house in Toorak is nearly finished, is it not?"

"It is quite finished. They went into it three weeks ago."

"It promised to be a very good house, though rather of the nouveaux riches order of architecture," he proceeded coolly; "and unfortunately it is impossible to manufacture trees, without which the best house looks bald and naked. But it stands well. It must be a very healthy situation; and that, after all, is the principal consideration."

"I hope she will be happy in it," said Mrs. Reade. Her soul rebelled against this mode of treating the question, and yet her efforts to divert the discussion into the channels that she had designed for it were absurdly feeble and futile.

"I hope so, indeed," he replied gravely. "I suppose you see a great deal of her, do you not?"

"Yes. I seldom miss a day without seeing her. Either I go to Toorak, or she comes here, or we meet somewhere about town. I do whatever is in my power to help to make her happy."

"It must be a happiness to you, too, to have her friendship and confidence in such a marked degree."

"It is," said Mrs. Reade.

"I – if you will excuse me – I will say good morning. Allow me to thank you very much for permitting me to call, and for your kind interest in my misfortunes – and in Mrs. Kingston's welfare. But the greatest service you can do her, Mrs. Reade, is to be silent yourself, and to discourage gossip in others, about anything that occurred either before or since her marriage in connection with me. I hope I do not seem discourteous in saying this – if so, pray forgive me. I speak to you frankly, because you are her friend. I am afraid she has not had many friends – there is the more reason that we who desire her welfare and happiness, should take every precaution against imperilling it by allowing any hint of these private matters to reach the ears of vulgar scandalmongers. A great crime has been done, for which if there is anything in the theory of retribution, some one will have to answer some day; but in the meantime our part is to take care that she is spared as much difficulty and suffering as possible."

"Yes, Mr. Dalrymple. That is what I think – that is what I was going to say."

"I am sure you think so. I am sure you see that that is all we can do for her now. Good morning. I am much obliged to you for your kindness. It looks rather as if we were going to have a storm, does it not? The air is close and sultry, and the glass is falling very fast."

He turned from looking out of the window and made a stately bow; she laid her hand upon the bell mechanically – she had no arts wherewith to keep him; and in another minute he had passed out of the house, and the door was shut upon him. The interview which was to have had such great results was over.

We have heard it said of a pioneer colonist, lessee of a Crown-land principality, that, after bearing the reverses of fortune which, with the advent of free selectors, overwhelmed him, the loss of land and stock and the accumulated treasure of toilsome and prosperous years, with the fortitude and equanimity of a gentleman, he was broken down at last by the unspeakable humiliation of the circumstance that he had "lived to hear himself called a boss-cocky."